By Srijit Das
An old video of a mob attacking a car with sticks has recently been shared with a false claim that it shows a BJP MLA and his supporters got beaten for asking votes in the name of religion in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.
BOOM found that the clip is old and from Odisha’s Khurda district. It shows an incident when a suspended BJD MLA rammed his car into a large gathering in March 2022.
In the video, a mob attacks a white SUV with sticks in the presence of a few policemen. Later the mob also thrashes a person pinning him the ground as the car drives through the crowd.
The video is being shared with a Hindi caption that translates to, BJP's trends have started coming from Madhya Pradesh. Watch the vigorous beating of the MLA for free".
(Original Text in Hindi: मध्य प्रदेश से भाजपा के रुझान आने लगे हैंl विधायक जी की जोरदार कुटाई देखिए मुफ़्त में)
Click here to view the post.
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Fact Check
BOOM went through the replies in the posts and found that a user mentioned the video to be an incident from Odisha, not Madhya Pradesh as claimed by the text in the viral clip.
Taking a cue, we ran a related keyword search on YouTube and found a news report by Odisha-based news channel Kalinga TV about the video on its official YouTube channel.
The title with the news report from March 12, 2022, states, "'Lakhimpur Kheri' In Odisha: Over 20 Injured As Chilika MLA Prashant Jagdev's Runs Car Over Crowd".
We also found that several other news outlets reported about the incident at that time.
The Indian Express article from March 13, 2022, stated that the incident happened when Prashant Jagdev, a BJD MLA from Chilika, rammed his car into a crowd in Odisha’s Khurda district. It said, "According to the police, a huge crowd, including BJP supporters, had gathered outside the Banapur Block Development Office (BDO) for the block chairperson election when the incident occurred. Jagdev, who was driving an SUV, was initially stopped by the crowd as he tried to drive through the heavily crowded road."
The report further added that Jagdev suffered serious injuries as the locals present there pulled him out of the vehicle and thrashed him using sticks.
One such visual reported by OTV on March 12, 2022, can be seen below.
Another article by NDTV on March 12, 2022, reported that a case was registered against the BJD MLA under multiple IPC sections at Banapur town police station over the incident.
The report said, "Saturday's incident was not the first involving the MLA. He was suspended from the ruling party last year for attacking a dalit leader of the opposition BJP. He was also accused of assaulting BJP workers at Manmunda in 2016, attacking Bolgarh tehsildar in 2018 and a staff of Chilika Development Authority in 2020."
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